Photoacoustic Medical Imaging

Part 01 Photoacoustic medical imaging's history

Introduction

Photoacoustic Medical Imaging is a medical based technique that relies on imaging. However, it is used to make images of the human body for medical purposes. Photoacoustic Medical Imaging is helpful in seeking medical diagnosis or study of the disease or medical sciences including the study of normal physiology and anatomy. Photoacoustic imaging is one of the latest breakthroughs in the world of medicine. Moreover, this technology provides enormous guarantee as an indicative instrument for doctors. Furthermore, the current scenario of this technology is that it remains restricted largely to laboratories mainly because the hospitals don't have the necessary equipment. It is on the cars that eventually photoacoustic imaging will likely become commonplace; mainly, because of all the advantages that it offers (Wang, 5767).

In the modern world of medicine Photoacoustic imaging is one of the cutting edge technologies. The fundamental aim of Photoacoustic Medical Imaging is that by using a laser pulse in the area that you are interested in looking at you will heat the tissue slightly. This heat will then generate high frequency sound waves as the result of the photoacoustic effect. This simply means that as the tissue gets heated it will expand slightly and this will cause a pressure wave which gets transmitted as sound. The sound waves produced are at a frequency that is too high for people to hear. However, a detector can be made to capture these waves. The slight differences in frequency of the waves will show the different areas of the internal structure. This can all be put together to create a picture.

Photoacoustic imaging

Most of the time people get amazed when they hear about this new phenomenon of the medical world. On the contrary, the concept which creates picture of the inner body by using sound waves isn't new, as ultrasound has been doing that for years. However, the great flaw with ultrasound is that it requires that the sound be made internally by your body. This is great for things like looking at a fetus in the womb or looking at your heart but it doesn't really do much for allowing doctors to see areas that aren't producing a sound. Photoacoustic imaging allows them to use a laser to create the sound that they need greatly enhancing what can be seen.

When we talk about photoacoustic imaging then it would not be wrong to say that it has various advantages over other forms of medical imaging is that it can give a much clearer picture than any other technique. The reasons behind its advantages are various; it gets a much better contrast between what you are looking at and the background. All imaging gets based on the idea of optical absorption. This is simply that different materials will absorb radio or light waves to a greater or lesser extent. These differences are what allow them to show up differently on the monitor. The problem with most medical imaging techniques is that optical absorption has to ...